


search and rescue (find me please)

by very_tired



Series: together we are the ocean [2]
Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Autism, Autism Spectrum, Autistic Character, Autistic Hwang Hyunjin, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Hwang Hyunjin Needs a Hug, M/M, Meltdown, Please be nice, Self-Harm, Stimming, Therapy, but he hasn't come to terms with it, but still, he gets overwhelmed and has a meltdown :(, hyunjin and his therapist agree he's autistic, i projected a lot here, it's self-injurious stimming during a meltdown, no official diagnosis, takes place before the first installment of this series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:34:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27346729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/very_tired/pseuds/very_tired
Summary: In which Hyunjin faces a scary truth, and needs his boys to help him remember that it doesn't define him.PLEASE READ TAGS- I'll give more specific warnings in the notes.
Relationships: Bang Chan/Hwang Hyunjin, Han Jisung | Han/Hwang Hyunjin, Hwang Hyunjin/Everyone, Hwang Hyunjin/Kim Seungmin, Hwang Hyunjin/Lee Felix, Hwang Hyunjin/Lee Minho | Lee Know, Hwang Hyunjin/Seo Changbin, Hwang Hyunjin/Yang Jeongin | I.N
Series: together we are the ocean [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1986107
Comments: 15
Kudos: 193





	search and rescue (find me please)

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everybody! I am back with a fic that holds more pieces of my soul than I ever thought I'd let people see. I hope it reaches everyone who needs it, in whatever way you need it to.
> 
> There is huge lack of accurate autistic representation not only in this fandom, but across the board on this site. I, an autistic person, have decided to write some. That being said, I am in no way assuming the neurotype and/or reality of the people who this story is about.
> 
> This fic takes place before the first installment of this series, and is Hyunjin-centric. I didn't forget about the other characters, they are just not focused on as much because this piece mainly focuses on Hyunjin's struggles with himself.
> 
> IN THIS FIC, Hyunjin has a meltdown in which he bites himself and pulls his hair. These are self-injurious stims that he cannot control or replace in his meltdown state, especially because he does not have any stim toys or alternatives to these behaviors at the time of his meltdown. If this type of self injury is triggering to you, please click off now and keep yourself safe. Also, this fic describes in detail quite a few of Hyunjin's stims, so if you are neurodivergent and reaction-stim but are in public/don't want to, be wary.
> 
> Please take care of yourself, and make sure to let me know what you think in the comments. I love you all!!

When Chan had come to them months ago, shaking and startlingly pale, and asked them to be quiet until he was done but that it might take a while for him to finish, that he might cry and seemingly zone out, but only to touch him if the latter happened, Hyunjin had been worried. So had everyone else, he supposed, but still. And when Chan had finished, Hyunjin was still nervous. Because the truth was, Hyunjin had no fucking idea how to help someone through processing trauma.

That’s why, when he finally broke down into tears two weeks later and Sungmin (the most level headed and logical of them all) suggested everyone go to therapy through the company at least once a month to better help their communication skills and ease any individual anxieties and issues, Hyunjin had jumped on the band wagon. He never thought that it would lead him to this.

“Have you ever heard of Autism Spectrum Disorder?” Hyunjin’s assigned therapist was nice, he liked her. She was young, maybe in her thirties, which made talking to her a little easier, She always wore colorful sweaters and a black pair of slacks, and her nails were always painted a bright red that reminded Hyunjin of a ladybug’s wings and his childhood. Right now, those nails were twirling and gently tapping a blue pen on a pad of lined paper. 

“Uhm-” Hyunjin cleared his throat a bit. “I have.” He shifted his gaze to the black an white clock, much like the ones that occupied the classrooms of his youth, and watched the second hand tick. “I have.”

“Have you ever thought about it in the context of yourself?” The minute hand shifted. 

“No. I-” He cleared his throat again. “I haven’t thought about it much at all.” That was a lie. In the dark hours of the early morning and the dim light of his phone screen, feeling scared and broken and  _ other _ , Hyunjin had turned to the internet for answers. He didn’t think he got any.

Three later, after a playful jest from Felix about how his hands could never stay still that had for some reason tugged on a deep-rooted insecurity of being  _ too much _ , did he ask for answers again. And again, the things he found that made sense also didn’t, because Hyunjin wasn’t autistic. Couldn’t possibly be autistic, because the doctors never said he was as a baby and he didn’t need to be in special ed and he hit all of his developmental milestones  _ early _ .

He also came home crying from school because the students were too loud, and none of the other kids were friends with him, and trying to make friends how his teacher tried to get him to always made him shut down, and he could  _ never keep his hands still _ , but still.

Hyunjin wasn’t Autistic. His therapist hummed.

“I want you to look into it, when you have the time, before our next session. Be open minded when you do, and if you’re up for it, we can talk about it next time we meet.”

\---

This time, with a blanket up over his head and his phone brightness on low, Hyunjin thought he might have found some answers,

\---

The dorm, as usual, was chaos. Felix and Jeongin were busy playing video games, loudly, taking up the TV and the couch. Chan, Jisung, and Changbin were probably in the studio again, being as nobody was getting after Sungmin and Minho who were currently attempting something in the kitchen, but were only succeeding in leaving dishes in the sink and a  _ disaster _ everywhere else.

It made Hyunjin want to hide in a dark corner somewhere and never come out, honestly. Not because he didn’t love his boys, god knows he wouldn’t be half the person he is today without him, but because Hyunjin woke up feeling like his skin was stretched too tight over his bones and everything was playing through a very loud set of concert speakers directly into his ears. The muscles in his shoulders are tight and he feels like the blood in his veins has all rushed to his palms, where the skin also feels like it’s vibrating because it needs to move and do something. 

_ I’m going to the studio. I’ll check on 3racha. Going to dance. Be back by 6. _

Hyunjin leaves out the front door to their dorm because maybe he’s just restless, maybe this isn’t the sensory overload he read about and talked about with his therapist and maybe his palms and blood are buzzing because he’s restless, not because his body needs to move to regulate emotion and input. 

He thinks that maybe if he dances and the feeling goes away, he can convince himself that he’s not Autistic. Maybe. 

\---

Hyunjin is starting to think that maybe dancing isn’t going to help. He’s alone in the practice room, and the fluorescent lights are bouncing off the mirrors and the shined wooden floors in ways that only feed Hyunjin’s headache. The squeaking of his shoes on the wooden floor below his feet make him feel like a drill is buzzing in his skull and the itch in the skin of his palms still has not subsided in the slightest. In fact, it feels like his whole body is buzzing now, like he’s teetering on the precipice of an absolute breakdown, like if one more thing makes even the smallest sound he’s going to snap. 

He takes off his shoes so that they can’t squeak when he walks to the lightswitch in the corner and dims the lights low enough to pretty much be off. He rolls his neck and cracks his joints and stretches. He’s past the point of stopping himself from biting his cheeks and lips raw, from sinking to the floor in the middle of the practice room and covering one ear with a cupped hand, from letting his other wrist go limp and flapping his hand side-to-side. 

He flexes his ankles and thinks that this might be stimming. He hums and grunts low on his breath. He doesn’t want to think about it.

\---

He doesn’t know how long he’s been there, sitting on the floor of the dark practice room, but eventually, he hears the door open. There’s talking and the lights turn on at full brightness and all Hyunjin can do is stim harder, whining loud in the back of his throat and rocking.

“Hyung, is that you? We gotta get back to the dorm before the boys start worrying!”

He whines louder, starting to hit his forehead into the inside of his free wrist where it meets the heel of his hand. He can’t speak. Vaguely, he remembers the word meltdown.

“Jinnie-hyung! Let’s go! Chan and Binnie Hyungs are already in the van.”

Hyunjin thinks he hears himself scream. He feels something good though, in his chest when he does it, so he does it again. He pulls his hair and bites his hand hard. Worrying Jisung was honestly the last thing on his mind when he scrambled back away from the hand placed on his arm, trying to convince him to stop biting himself.Hyunjin doesn’t think he could even if he wanted to, as he listens to his dongsaeng calling the others.

\---

Hyunjin still had no idea what time it was when he came to. His rocking slowed and his grip on his hair loosened and he unclenched his jaw to let his hand drop, now only lazily rolling his wrists and flexing his fingers. He could tell that the worst of it was over, but his entire being felt like a raw nerve. His throat was dry and he honestly didn’t think he could make words move out of it if he tried, and he was exhausted to the bone, so he melted to lay prone on the cool floor of the practice room with eyes closed.

Seeing that the fierceness of his hyung’s breakdown had seemingly fizzled out into whatever the fuck was happenong now, Jisung dared to move closer, quietly.

“Hyung? Do you think we can go back to the dorm and you can lay in your bed?” He knew that the actual conversation about whatever he had just witnessed probably had to wait until tomorrow, when everyone could be present and after Hyunjin had slept. 

An almost imperceptible nod. Hyunjin was still doing that thing with his hands, Jisung noticed. “Can I touch you to help you up?” A shake of the head. “Okay then Hyung, I need you to stand up and follow me ok? There’s a van parked out front for us.”

Hyunjin hummed. That seemed reasonable enough. When he stood, his limbs were wobbly in the same way they were after dance practice, and he vaguely registered that his shoes were still on the floor somewhere. Oh well.

\---

Back at the dorm, the other boys were sitting in the living room waiting, but didn’t ask any questions. Hyunjin walked right past them with his eyes trained on the floor, still rolling his wrists, straight to his bedroom before closing the door.

“I called management to tell them that wee needed our schedules cleared for tomorrow morning at least. They said the only thing that couldn’t be rearranged was my meeting with them at two. So we’re all good to sleep in and have time to talk before I have to go,” Chan relayed to the group. “Get some sleep.”

\---

The next day, sitting around the dining table they never ate at, seven boys listened just as they had for Chan all those months ago.

“I, um-” Hyunjin started, chest tight. “My therapist and I think that I might be Autistic.” He squeezed his eyes and fists tight for a moment before continuing. “And what happened yesterday was probably a meltdown because I was overstimulated and trying not to, um-” he took a deep breath in. “I was trying to stop stimming because i felt really annoying, and like I was bothering you guys, and like if I could prove that I didn’t have to do it then I was just making up being Autistic or something.” The silence that followed Hyunjin’s statement was heavy enough that you could hear a pin drop.

“Jinnie, I think I speak for all of us when I say that I don’t care that you’re Autistic, and that I’m sorry that we ever made you feel like you were annoying somehow.” Chan says, always the first one to break the silence in situations like these, feeling the need to comfort and fix whatever he could about the boys he loved so dearly.

“Yeah Jinnie-hyung, um, I don’t really know what stimming is or really what a meltdown is, I mean, I could guess because of what I saw yesterday in the practice room but, um, I’ll do research and ask you questions and stuff, because I love you, and I want to make things easier for you because you shouldn’t feel bad about something you can’t change, and I’m sorry if I ever made you feel that way.”

Various words of agreement came from everyone else around the table, and Hyunjin felt loved and accepted by them in a way that he hadn’t even given himself yet. “Um, stimming is like, my hand things that I do and sounds I make and stuff, it’s a way for me to physically process input and emotions so that it’s easier for me to process them.And a meltdown is when there’s too much input, I guess? And it gets overloaded and bubbles over until yesterday happens.”

“Oh my god Hyung, I’m so sorry for like, pointing out the hand things you do,” Felix responds. “I really don’t care if you stim or whatever I won’t point it out again unless you want me too in public or interviews or something.”

Hyunjin smiled, bright and blinding and real, before ensuring Felix that it wasn’t his fault. He told the group how he didn’t think he wanted to pursue an official diagnosis right now because it could cause more harm than good for their career if it gets out, and that he didn’t mind them commenting on his stims as long as they didn;t make fun of them. The last bit was met with quite a few “we would never’s” that warmed Hyunjin’s heart and made him wiggle in his seat, right hand starting up a happy little flapping motion up by his shoulder.

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you thought of this with Kudos and a comment!


End file.
